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What joys there are in strawberries, the first fruits of summer! Fancy dishes: strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream, strawberry tarts. And plain ones: a bowl of berries with sugar and lemon juice, or with cream. The local strawberries have been going strong this season, leading me to try a few new-to-me preparations with them.
I found two fine simple ones in the Fruits volume of the Time-Life Good Cook series. Each book in this series is an eclectic treasure trove of recipes, reprinted with permission, from everything from classic to all-but-forgotten sources. More than 100 are cited in this volume, for instance. I’d never heard of either of the sources for my two new recipes.
Strawberries with Vinegar
Vinegar: odd ingredient for a dessert, I thought. The more so because the recipe comes from a book called The Cuisine of Venice (authors Hedy Giusti-Lanham and Andrea Dodi) and I’d never found another Venetian dish like it. The recipe’s explanations intrigued me, starting with the odd first step in the simple procedure: Put unwashed strawberries in a bowl and pour on wine to cover. I did that, using a cup of white wine and a pint of berries, for a half recipe to serve two.
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After five minutes I was to pour off the wine and discard it: It was there only to wash the berries. The recipe said washing with water dilutes their taste and makes them watery – not a problem I’ve ever been aware of. Still, there was some wine in my refrigerator that had been open for several days already, so “wasting” wine that way wasn’t too painful.
For serving, I divided the berries over two little bowls and added a teaspoon of distilled white vinegar to each, plus a sprinkling of powdered sugar. The recipe assured me that I wouldn’t be able to taste the vinegar; it would be overpowered by the berries, and its acidity would enhance their flavor and increase their sweetness.
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And in fact, that was exactly the case. The berries were delicious. The cookies you see accompanying the bowls of this hitherto-unknown Venetian preparation are traditional “esse” cookies from the island of Burano, a souvenir of my recent Venice trip.
Strawberries in Liqueur
This recipe, originally published in the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland, caught my eye because I happen to have all three of the liqueurs in the ingredient list – Armagnac, Curaçao, and kirsch. It’s another very simple preparation, and again I was halving the recipe to serve two.
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I hulled, washed (in water, this time!), and patted dry a pint of strawberries and mixed them in a bowl with half a tablespoon of sugar. Over them I poured a scant tablespoon of Armagnac and a scant tablespoon of Curaçao, then covered the bowl and refrigerated it for an hour..
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Next I whipped ¼ cup of heavy cream with about a teaspoon of sugar and added a scant tablespoon of kirsch. I gently folded that into the berries and returned the bowl to the refrigerator for another hour.
This was wonderful. When I transferred the berries to serving bowls, the liqueur had softened the cream into a luscious sauce, which coated the strawberries and blended yet another lovely, subtly spiced flavor to that of the chilled, fragrant fruit. Ambrosia!
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This dish goes into my repertory for as long as strawberry season and my supply of the three brandies lasts.
Another Year in Recipes 